Combating the Cultural Appropriation of Food with Zoe Adjonyoh | The Food Blogger Pro Podcast

You have an Instagram video that does a great job talking through the difference between appropriation and appreciation. Did you. Could you explain a little bit about that? And could you talk about how you were maybe able to observe that as you started to see some of the ripple effects of you maybe leading this movement?

Well, do you know what, in terms of cultural appropriation, appreciation, people don't know this, but really, where my obsession with this question stems from my own, I'm going to say confusion. Right. Because when I started Ghana Kitchen, I was very cognizant of the fact that I didn't want to be perceived as appropriating the culture from which I'm from. That was really, really important to me. Like, I didn't want Ghanaians to think I was bastardizing it. I didn't want. I also didn't want people to think that I was representing Ghanaian food on.

Sure.

You know, carte blanche kind of thing. You know, it was. And that is specifically why I called it Zoe's Ghana Kitchen to. Sure. To really pull it to me, it's like, this is my relationship.

Yeah, yeah.

This is my story as regards versus.

Like, the Ghana Kitchen, like Capital tv. Yeah, yeah.

And. And what happened is over time, and it's also important to know that I had nothing to do with a food scene. Right. I didn't come. I've never worked in a restaurant. I wasn't culinary trained. So that world was outside of me. And I was very much in my bubble making food. I love to make. Playing with flavors and ingredients for the passion and for the play and for the love. Right. So I was very much outside of an industry that likes to label and other and do all of these things. But I was cognizant that it was there in terms of how I spoke about my own stuff. And the. More like, especially once the cookbook came out in 2017 and leading up to that, and the more I was integrated into that food scene culture, the more horrified I became by the cultural appropriation. Consistently, just consistently smothering me. Like, I couldn't believe how many people thought it was okay to start a Thai street food store when they had nothing to do with the culture or Vietnamese or, you know, all of these cultures were being appropriated by middle class, rich white men. And a lot of the time without any authenticity behind what they were doing. So they were doing a very bad translation of the cuisine, but making a lot of money doing it. And it just became increasingly more alarming to me that that was the thing that was happening. So to Bring it back to that video. In recent years, so my focus shifted from, you know, pioneering West African food and flavors for, let's say, the first eight, nine years, what I was doing to now the last three or four years, my focus has been on this idea of decolonizing the food industry and making people understand what cultural appropriation is and does and the negative effect it has on the culture, both from a wealth building perspective and from an equitable perspective in terms of who gets congratulated for what and what that reward means. And, you know, just in looking at the whole food chain and the whole food system and who benefits out of this. And usually it's not black or brown people, and it's because of cultural appropriation. And so the difference is, you know, and I should also point out there is a. Have an anecdote here which highlights, like, my involvement in appropriation, if you'd like, for one of some better words. Whereas I was taking a taxi one time and the driver was a Ghanaian man. And we were having a chat, as you want to do with your taxi driver. You don't want to. You have to. And, you know, I was telling him what. He asked me what I did for a living. I said, I'm a cook. I'm a chef. And then he heard I was Ghanaian. And then he realized I was the Zoe from Zoe's Ghana Kitchen, which he heard of. And he pulled over, he was like. He's like he couldn't believe it that I was in his car.

Yeah, yeah.

I thought, oh, he's a fan. This is nice. He pulled over the car and he showed me a WhatsApp message group that he was on before he got into the. Before I got into his car.

Yeah.

And it's basically this big discussion between a load of Ghanaians and Ghana about me and about Zoe's Ghana Kitchen and about the cookbook and basically questioning whether I had the right to, you know, whether it was good or bad what I was doing for the cuisine. Like there was a whole thing about it.

Yeah, yeah.

Then I had to have a big conversation with him about, you know, what my purpose was and what I'm doing. And, you know, I'm trying to bring the culture some love and light, not rip it off kind of thing.

Yeah.

So just so that people know that. I guess my point is, is that it is possible to be considered within your culture as appropriate in your culture, which is what I. Exactly what I was scared of at the beginning. Right, sure.

Yeah. Right, right.

I'm just putting my hands up to say that I am not without being a target for that accusation.

Yeah. What was that like for you? Did that experience? It feels like that would be the kind of thing where you, when you stepped into the taxi versus when you stepped out of the taxi, where your mind is, is like a completely separate place.

Yeah. I mean, it was interesting. It was funny mostly, to be honest. But, you know, I convinced him of my argument. He. Yeah, to be honest, he was already on my side. I think people in the group who were a bit.

Yeah, yeah, yes.

But, you know, so there's purists in any culture, you'll have purists who will say that, you know, this isn't Ghanaian food or this is X, this is Y. It's a very complex field to negotiate. But there, there are some basic rules that I think should stand as regards identifying appropriation versus appreciation. And when you are appreciating a culture, you're not claiming it as your own if it's not your own. Right. So you're signposting where you've got these recipes from. You're signing what the mother recipe is. If you're changing it, you're honoring the people that created it or produced it, who gave you the knowledge to be able to pass it on. It's really about respect for where the food comes from or the recipe comes from in the first place. And then it's about if you want to monetize that, it's about ensuring that at some point in the monetization process, there's somebody involved in the culture who gets to benefit from it equally because it's not okay otherwise. It's tantamount to like colonialism and just going somewhere and taking everything that's good, which still goes on in Africa. Honestly, there's a huge Chinese influence there right now, where there's a lot of colonization going on, frankly. But, you know, appropriation is. I went to, I'm sorry to use Thailand consistently as an example. It's just a really good example, you know. Yeah, people go to the Far east, they go to Southeast Asia, they have a two week holiday, they taste some delicious lapsang or they taste, you know, whatever it is, and they're like, that's amazing. I can make this and I'm gonna start a food business, right? And they'll come back and that's what they'll do. But they won't necessarily learn how to make it from the right person. They won't hire any people from the culture in relation to producing that. They won't reference anything about the culture properly. And more often than not, they will bastardize the recipes to make them palatable to where they're serving it. And the same thing happens with cookbooks a lot. You know, it's like people go on holiday for two weeks when they've got nothing to do with the culture and come back and write a cookbook about. It's like, if black and brown people don't have that privilege. So if we don't have that privilege, can you leave our culture alone and let us be the ones to talk about it and write about it and sell the food and monetize it kind of thing? Anyway, yeah. You know, I go. I bang on about cultural appropriation a lot. Google me and cultural appropriation. There's plenty out there.

Well, it's good. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, Alexa and our team reached out and shared that video with me. She said, I think this would be a really good conversation because it's really applicable, obviously, to the food world, other worlds as well.

Yeah.

At a conversation. I don't remember what episode this was, but if people follow along with the podcast with Marcus Samuelson, fellow New Yorker, and he drew analogies to music, like, in that world, and how music has an art form, much like food is an art form. It's, you know, there's a lot of analogies that can exist within there, and folks can check out that podcast episode as well to hear his thoughts on it.

Like in. In 2010.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Another example, I remember saying in 2010 that they've already. They've already started appropriating the music. This is when, like, Afrobeats and high life started coming into mainstream pop in Europe in a significant way. And also in fashion, you would see a lot of traditional. I can't name all the different types of fabrics, so I'm going to use the shorthand of African fabric, because each tribe has their own. In Ghana, we have kente is like the big tribal fabric. But, you know, you would see a lot of those patterns coming into commercial big stores, like your primarks and your hennies and your, you know, big stores. And so I. I made a point of saying at the time, you know, and that's what happens with food. It's usually the music, the fashion, and then the food that cross over kind of in that order.

But music first, then fashion, then food.

Yeah. And then. But usually when it. The people. When it's the original people making it. So, you know, young African musicians or young African designers They don't get to benefit from the mass appropriation of it because it's stolen. It's. The beats are stolen, there's no credit. Given the fast idea of the print is stolen and there's no credit.

Yeah. And they're not going to be able to call their attorney and say, yeah.

And the same thing happened just recently. Tom Kerridge just put out a recipe for Suya kebabs. And it's like, why, why is Tom Kerridge putting out a recipe for Suya kebabs? That's way out of his field of interest or influence. He shouldn't have any hands on that whatsoever. And if the program that allowed him to do that wants to profile West African food, they should pick a West African chef to do it. I mean, I feel very strongly about that. It's got, he's got business putting out that kind of recipe because he didn't even credit where he got it from.

Sure.

Like, he didn't invent it, did he? He didn't make it.

Right, right.

It's like, yeah, where did you get that?

Right, right. Do you, do you have examples of whether it's individuals or companies that you've run into and you're like, yes, like doing this? Well, does that exist or not really?

I mean, it's very rare, honestly. Like there's a brand in the States called Trimminga and they have like, they're a married couple. So it's a bit different. So it's led by a white woman and her partner who is African man, I believe, based in Kenya. I think he's Kenyan.

Okay.

So it is slightly different. But you know, I think they do a good job of making sure that this white woman isn't the face of the brand, for example, and that they're telling the story of all the people who work to make those products. And they are amazing products.

And what kind of products?

So it's basically different extrapolations of moringa. So moringa is a superfood. It's usually consumed as, you know, like a very high antioxidant, vitamin packed ingredient for lots of health benefits. Usually consumed in powder form. Maybe you drink it as a tea or something like that. But you can get, from moringa you can get oils and you can use the fibers that it's one of those plants like okra or hibiscus where the whole plant has many, many uses. And so they have products like moringa based skin care range, Moringa oil, Moringa body scrubs, things like that. But I'm not sure it really falls sensibly into this category. The question is like, is anyone doing it? Well, I think nobody can do cultural appropriation. Well, sure, yeah, that's the thing. The way that you can, if, if your company is culturally appropriating, the way that you can change the sting of that is to, as I say, bring in talent, whether it's consulting or marketing or it's like, who are you using to translate the story behind the brand or ingredient or whatever. How are you doing it? Who are you doing it to? It's very much like about the lens and the gaze. What we have to get away from is this kind of white gaze that tells a very restrictive, usually story and more often than not others, the community which it's financially benefiting from. So it's more about that. It's like, who's on your. If you are a white finance company, there's nothing wrong with white people's money. Obviously they have more of it than us, usually. Then who's fronting the brand? Who is telling the story of the brand? Who's making the leadership decisions? Who's hiring? Who are you hiring? Yeah, and you know, how, how are you creating a truly diverse and equitable system where somebody from the culture benefits?

Yeah, and I think that's kind of getting at the question maybe for people who are listening to the podcast and they think understanding the category of like, this is something that you shouldn't do. To your point, like can't do cultural appropriation. Well, like, it's just like that doesn't exist proactively, then what does it look like to do things? And for people who are asking that question, who are listening, you spoke to that a little bit, like to think strategically about kind of what it looks like to fold in strong representation of different people. So it's not like, you know, if you have a finance company that it's not all 30 something white guys. You know, it's like if I reached out to my Twin Cities, Minnesota network of friends, like, that's probably what it would look like. So how do I think strategically and be proactive if that's something that I want to do of looking, considering that and making that a priority. Do you have other thoughts for people who are in the category of, hey, I'm listening to this, I want to not only not do wrong, but I want to do right and to do good? What does that look like? Does that question make sense or kind. I mean, I mean, a basic example would be like supporting businesses who are, you know, the, the creator and the owner is aligned with and connected to like the food that they're creating, you know, like versus some random Thai place in that it doesn't have that connection. Like a Thai family as an example, to use the Thai, hey, go to that Thai restaurant from a Thai family who just immigrated. Other ideas for people who are like, I'm passionate about this, I want to join in this movement. How do, how do we do that?

Yeah, I mean the consumer has some purchasing power, right? So if, if enough people start interrogating who, who, who they're buying from and is it appropriate to buy this from there? So I know that's quite a lot to put on a consumer. I mean you think about people like Trader Joe's, right? You go into Trader Joe's and Trader Joe's make good stuff, right? They make good food with ingredients from all over the world. Right. Does anybody at Trader Joe's necessarily have anything to do do with that? Probably not, but they put out plantain chips, they'll put out various things from all over the world. So yeah, the question is if you really want to eat plantain chips, maybe you should look up Sumo foods or maybe you should look up another brand like a Sankofa snacks, right? Who from the culture makes this product? Because it's probably going to be better, honestly. And also, you know that then you know, you're supporting the culture from where the food comes from. And there's not just one person making plantain chips, there's hundreds these days and many of them are black owned businesses. So I think that's the thing is like if you, whether it's, you know, South Asian food or Indian food or any food from the African continent, it's like just look at the label, like where is it made? Who, who's making it? And are they from the culture or are they ripping the culture off? Because in my opinion, if they're not from the culture, then they're ripping the culture off, really.

It's interesting. We did a team event with a chocolate maker in Jamaica and he was talking about the four really like the four chocolate companies and the disconnect that exists between where the cocoa is harvested and when it's like actually then sold and like Target, you know, and it's like, wow, you can start to understand that as why it's important, the significance of buying, like trying to understand where you're buying from and getting as close to the source as possible. Would that be an accurate way to describe it?

That would be a really great way to describe it. And cocoa is a great example because for example, Ghana makes, I don't know, something like 80 or 90% of the cocoa products in Europe are used Ghana and cocoa. However, because it's not, the facilities aren't yet in Ghana to process that chocolate. Right. Because the money isn't there within the indigenous community to. And maybe the knowledge as well yet. But it is happening soon, I hope, process that cocoa into consumer bars. So you know, they ship out the cocoa, it goes to Belgium, it goes to France, it goes everywhere. It goes to America as well, to be honest. And then it's sold back to Ghana in bars that people can't afford. Nobody can afford to buy those bars of chocolate and it's their cocoa, which is. Yeah, yeah, just insane, you know. And like that part of the problem, it's like, and again, you know, this isn't, I'm not trying to say that consumers, you're bad people for not knowing this stuff and you're not bad people for making better choices. But there is an opportunity now and there is some responsibility to educate yourself because it's also about sustainability. You know, it all contributes at the intersection of sustainability and what is, how do we all survive and thrive in this world. Right. With as much equity and equality built into it as possible. And it's not any longer okay for big white conglomerates to be the only people benefiting from tech, finance and you know, mass marketing, consumerism, especially when they're doing it in a way that as I said before, others or diminishes the communities and cultures from which they're, they're making that capital benefit. You know, capitalism doesn't have to be a bad dirty thing, but it certainly needs to be done better. And also, you know, there's lots and lots of brands. Now look at Diaspora Co. I think most brands these days will wear their mission on their sleeve if they, you know, look at Burlap and Barrel in New York and which is a white owned company but it's selling spices from around the world. But what they, in fact there's your example because you asked for one Burlap and Bound.

Because what they do as a company who you'd say, hey, look at this as example. Maybe not everything right, But a lot of things, right?

Well, they're very sensitive about telling the story of the people in the places where the ingredients come from. And it's not like, hi, I'm a white guy and I found the best X ingredient, this chili in the world. Like, no, you didn't. You hired somebody to help you, and they're honest about that. You know, And I think you. You as a consumer, if you go to a website and they're telling you that. If they're telling you, we work in partnership with this farm and we do this to ensure these fair wages, and, you know, we have a very short, transparent supply chain. And if you see words like that on the website, that's. That's. That. That should encourage you to want to purchase from that company, because there is a value chain there, like, you know, that. You know that there's responsibility being taken along the supply chain for making sure that people are getting paid properly, and also that people are getting recognition for what they contribute to that ingredient being on the shelf at the end of the day. And I think that's what's missing, notably missing from a lot of large companies is near the same companies that would put up black squares during Black Lives Matter a year later, what have they done to change their policies around anything as regards diversity and equity, inclusion, stuff like that? Not very much, honestly. So there's a lot of virtue signaling that goes on, and I think that's the hard piece for consumers to navigate, but it is. There is a small responsibility on us as people who purchase things to be mindful of that, you know, and it's complicated with restaurants in particular, because.

Sure.

You know, there also comes a point like, who owns this cuisine anymore? And like what. Because so much, especially in America, so much cuisine is beyond fusion, right? Because.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Especially when you think of the east coast, like in New York, there's so many restaurants where you can eat ingredients from all over the world on one menu. Like, I recently just in. I want to write an article about this particular thing, actually. So you're getting a sneak peek into this.

All right, good preview.

I went to a restaurant in Asheville recently, the name of which sounds Japanese, but is actually Native American. And the. The strap line for the restaurant says Japanese smokehouse, but it's not a smokehouse. Sure, Right. And the menu, which was incredible, I have to say, first and foremost, everything on the menu was stunning. Like, wait, the taste, the flavor, the presentation execution was brilliant, but it wasn't. There was Japanese ingredients involved in most of the dishes, but it wasn't Japanese food and it wasn't Japanese street food, which is the other thing they're calling it influenced by Japanese street. So. And then I found out that there's no Japanese person working in the kitchen. However, you know, the chefs that have been hired to deliver that menu have experience of working in Asia at Ling for some time. So it's complicated, right?

Yeah.

What do we.

There's not. It's not black and white, clear line, black and white.

But what I can say is, like, while the food was absolutely stunning, and I would recommend anyone to go there, you know, I do take issue with the name. I do take issue with how they're describing the menu, and I do take issue with the fact that it is cultural appropriation. And, you know, even a point was made that the owner had never. The owner has a bit of an empire around the concept of Japanese food. Right. Not just this one place. And there was almost like this braggadocious element to him being like, I've never been to Japan. You know, it's like, I just wonder, like, what the thinking is behind that. It's like, why wouldn't you hire a Japanese chef if you're so focused on that? Like, what is it that stops you from enabling the community to participate in it? You know, it's curious to me, and.

To your point, it seems like that more than important, beyond anything, is to understand and consider and to know that there will never probably be an instance where you'll be able to say, hey, this checks every single box. And there might be some instances of that, but it sounds like there's a spectrum. And what you realize is that spectrum can shift from either extreme. And to be aware of it for people who aren't. And I think it's a huge part of this conversation is introducing that awareness level for people who maybe weren't aware at all or were aware, but not really, and maybe hopefully leveling that up a little bit.